@trafficjamers, You are right. I got used to just putting items as the one 'item' rate, even though some of my patterns were up to 7 ounces! I had completely missed that it was changing back. Thanks for bringing that up Cosmic. Hopefully most of my stuff still has the weight at 2 that are heavier that the regular weight 1's that most of my patterns can go buy.

While in the drugstore the other day, some guy dropped 2 pennies out of his pocket. I brought it to his attention and he said, well they were just pennies and who cared. The guy sitting next to me agreed. Well the guy who dropped them paid for his meds with some change from his pocket and since I tend to be their a lot, about the only people who can pay for prescriptions with a couple of quarters either have an excellent health plan or are on welfare. I don't know which. But the PO is now showing us that bumping up a mail class ONE penny is a worthwhile and money making activity, I wish people could understand that they are throwing money away a penny at a time! Yeah it seems like nothing. I saved all the money I found laying on the ground for a year or two and ended up with over $2. I would have picked up the 2 pennies but I would have probably fallen flat on my face.

I suspect those guys from the millionaire next door book would also not throw their pennies on the ground. They know they add up. If you are willing to pick up the pennies then other sums can present themselves. Amy sister's HS graduation (in the Dark Ages) I found a $5 bill on the ground! Candy bars and stamps were still a nickel, so what would that have been worth in today's dollars? I once stopped my car to get out and pick up $14 on the road (it was no a busy street, I wouldn't have done it on the freeway). Anyhow, totally off topic, but seeing that one penny increase just got me thinking that yah, those pennies make a difference as does a company not making their earning goals by a penny their stock plummets but if the are over even a fraction of a penny it sends their stocks up. Pennies still have value in our society. You just have to be willing to collect enough of them!

Dumb question, does eCrater automatically make the adjustment if we're using calculated shipping?

eCRATER uses the USPS calculated shipping so it is always up to date. During checkout, the eCRATER checkout system calls the USPS site for the shipping rate. This is also why you need to have one of the eCRATER shipping methods setup as a backup for the USPS calculated shipping in case the USPS website times out.

The spreadsheet (link above) has been updated to correct one erroneous cell, plus it now shows a percentage change for like cells/weights, between 2016 and 2017. Above zone 5, the change appears to be roughly 3%, from zones 1 thru 5, some of the increases are substantial.

My guess would be the rate changes for international are being done at a different time of the year. Changing both might be too much for USPS to handle at once, and/or there are considerations involving other countries changing at the same time.

Would you believe that on the Amazon forum yesterday there were several sellers that weren't paying attention to the postage rate increase, claiming Amazon was scamming them and taking too much for postage!

For those using endicia that haven't yet done anything about the increased rates, here is what endicia is charging me for those that might be interested and if you are still buying shipping at the PO might be a reason to switch to e/postage:

That was so nice for the past year or so to not have to deal with price changes up to 8 oz, now there are two and every ounce after that is another change. I updated my matrix and hope I got it right. At times I sell two patterns that are only 5 ounces packaged and other times I can sell 2 patterns that are 11-13 ounces packaged if they are my heavyweight patterns. Of course, with the postal rates how they were last year, I have no idea how much some of them weigh where I used to list anything that weighed 5 or more ounces as weight 2 on the matrix. Hopefully I didn't list too many of those monster patterns as weight 1. I should have known better!

I wonder why they let 4 weights be all the same price when they were changing it every ounce on the rest of them? Not complaining since if they had changed they would have been charging even more.

Thanks for adding the extra info Sheila. I never am thinking about the calculated rates, other than I think if were using them, I would have everything weighing several ounces more to cover the packaging, etc.